The books you hated!

[Kumquatqueen]

Guys.

This book is all about how the old gods live among us as regular people who yearn for the power they've lost, and there's a dude in it called Low-Key Lyesmith.

LOW. KEY.

*crams every book award into a t-shirt cannon and aims it at Neil Gaiman's face*

I'm not one to say that an author's work retroactively becomes worse just because said author has been outed as a terrible person. But my god, it's hard to think of anything he did that was worth a shit after Sandman.

Lie-smith, even?

Yeah, the names aren't subtle, but given how many readers I know didn't figure out who Wednesday was until it's revealed, and how many had never heard of Anansi, I'll let him off for that.

This is the guy who came to fame by having parts of London made into terribly-punning names. Like near the Angel, Islington (one of the light blue squares on UK Monopoly), there's an angel. He's called Islington. Or the knights on a bridge in Knightsbridge...

The Neverwhere TV series was good, but it wasn't claiming to be highbrow, just entertaining. It's much more like Good Omens and Pratchett, and I think American Gods works better if you think of it as an extension of a comic (as in amusing) writing tradition.

 

[VallesMarineris]

Billy Bud was nearly unbearable, a gift from one of my English teachers. But on balance I was introduced to more pleasantly memorable books than bad ones.

I'm thinking that a lot of our dislike of old classics is a result of our current era being so fast-moving and crowded with things to do and see and listen to, compared to more sedate times. Two examples:

I recently played Jason and the Argonauts, the old Ray Harryhausen movie, to a 12-year old boy (close relative). I thought he would find it interesting, because he was into computers and special effects, and that he would find it cool to see those skeleton warriors and learn how the scene was done without any computers. Nope. He said it was the worst movie he'd ever seen (he's prone to hyperbole) because 1) he didn't care if they did the special effects without CGI, they were still bad; and most of all, 2) he didn't get to see any monsters until at least 10 minutes into the movie! In TV and movies these days the first scene needs to grab the viewer immediately or they're going to switch to a different streaming service. There isn't even time for titles, which will only show briefly after that first scene.

Re my own reading, I remember really enjoying Swann's Way (the first volume in Proust's opus) when I read it in college. Recently I tried to get back into it and failed. I couldn't get through the first scene, in which Marcel (Proust's alter ego) describes his thoughts at bedtime. I found a remark from the first publisher Proust sent the novel to, whose rejection said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't see why I need to suffer through 32 pages of the character's meandering thoughts while he's falling asleep." I had to agree!

We don't have time anymore for the slow burn.

 

[lovecraft68]

Going to deviate a little and mention a comic book story line.

Spiderman: One More Day story line.

I remember reading it in my comic shop, got to the end, ripped the comic in half, tossed it in the trash in front of several customers and told them if they wanted one, grab it now because I was going-and did, toss the rest of the copies in the trash and not reorder that issue. I never read another Spiderman comic after that, and I'd been reading that title since the late seventies.

My reaction was a bit extreme, but even now, that ending is infamous for pissing people off.

Books? Probably Desperation, the last King book I bought. I'd been losing interest in him steadily after Dark Half, but this thing was such a moronic shitshow I haven't read anything by him since.

 

[BellaBestia]

The books I’ve hated are memorable to me only because I get so annoyed and frustrated with them I literally throw them across the room. Since editing to an e-reader I don’t have the satisfaction of doing that anymore.
Books I’ve thrown: 50 Shades of Grey, The Stone Angels, Stephen King’s The Stand, Anne Rice’s Blackwood Farm.

 

[Saturn0815]

The books I’ve hated are memorable to me only because I get so annoyed and frustrated with them I literally throw them across the room. Since editing to an e-reader I don’t have the satisfaction of doing that anymore.
Books I’ve thrown: 50 Shades of Grey, The Stone Angels, Stephen King’s The Stand, Anne Rice’s Blackwood Farm.

I got the exact same feeling when I read Prince Harry's memoir "Spare". What an entitled little shit!

 

[Wifetheif]

I wouldn't say "hated" but the book that saved me the most time was Ayn Rand's Anthem. I read it in junior high school. I and my fellow classmates tore it apart as being simultaneously illogical, preachy, badly plotted, and just plain wrong. Fourteen year old me was cured of ever taking Ayn Rand seriously for the rest of my life. So I'll curse the lesson and bless the knowledge. Another book that changed my life was "Angels Haunted Halo" by a Canadian non entity named Danny Gallagher. It was about baseball curses and misfortunes but it was so appallingly badly written that I knew instantly I could be a better writer. My award winning nonfiction book is a direct result of Gallagher's moronic opus and has opened so many doors for me. Sometimes a bad book can be GOOD for you!

 

[Northstar4695]

The Fountainhead. Very strange book. About as subtle as a brick to the face on the messaging, bizarre character choices, and honestly just very boring.

 

[Hypnobitch01]

We have plenty of threads about our favorite movies, books, songs, stories, food, beverages, socks, umbrellas, and so on. Well, I thought I'd start one about the books we hated, for whatever reason. Maybe a good discussion opens up, who knows! (Yeah, right... )

Anyway, I am at the midpoint of reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman after postponing its reading for years. Well, fuck me, this has to be one of the most frustrating books I have ever taken into my hands. How can one author be so amazing at some aspects of writing yet suck so much at others? At times I am really enjoying it, only to start groaning just a few pages later. I know he is supposed to be an acclaimed author and this is the first book of his I have started reading (likely the last as well ) but more often than not I seem to be disappointed by these "bestsellers".

Share your own frustrations or discuss those that others post at will.

Of Mice and Men is the worst book I’ve ever read. The pacing is awful, the characters are flat and boring, and i still cannot understand why it’s considered a classic

 

[Carnevil9]

Stephen King. I love horror, so I figured I should love his books. And dear Lord, I tried. I read all of Needful Things although I found it interminably dull. Then I read all of The Dead Zone with no more success. Then I got halfway through The Dark Half before I finally gave up and decided he just Wasn't For Me. No disrespect to those who love his work, but it left me cold. Too many words packed into too little content.

I do love most of the movies based on his works, though, if that counts for anything!

 

[HordHolm]

Tolstoy! Fucking, bastarding, c*nting Tolstoy!! That fucking Prince Andrew taking half my fucking lifetime to fucking die!!!! Jeez I hate most 19th Century literature, authors taking twenty pages to get to the naffing point that they aren't sure about what they feel but, hey, they're tortured, but Tolstoy!!!!!! People tell me he was a genius author. Well, I'll say that he was an entitled, arrogant cock who wrote because he loved the sight of his oh, so superior prose. The other author I've felt that about is Lovecraft. Just words for the sake of them, going nowhere except up their arrogant arses. Tolstoy is the worst of those two, though, so convinced of himself, so certain that we're hanging on the ten thousandth word in the soup just as much as we were on the first, as his benighted Prince swoons for the fiftieth time. JUST BLOODY DIE ALREADY!!!

After War and Peace wild horses couldn't drag me over stony ground to Anna Karenina, but my wife, an educated woman with a PhD and a deep interest in 'good' culture, tells me she felt exactly the same about that book, and was reduced to shouting, "just bloody jump!" as she read the climactic scene in the train station. Seriously, DO NOT READ TOLSTOY. The man's an ego-maniac c*nt.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

After War and Peace wild horses couldn't drag me over stony ground to Anna Karenina, but my wife, an educated woman with a PhD and a deep interest in 'good' culture, tells me she felt exactly the same about that book, and was reduced to shouting, "just bloody jump!" as she read the climactic scene in the train station. Seriously, DO NOT READ TOLSTOY. The man's an ego-maniac c*nt.

In defense of War and Peace - and I'm not saying that it's a good novel - it was originally never written as a novel. It was a serial in a magazine. That's why it's so bloody long and each chapter is so drawn out. It was purposely written as a soap opera to make money. Common folk couldn't often afford books but they could buy magazines more cheaply and so often authors who needed money would write serial installments as they went (much like many writers on lit with their indulgent unending series) to make the rent by contracting to periodicals. That's why the plot meanders and stagnates so bloody much. The series was popular so he kept adding to it and a decade later, a publisher bound them all up and printed them as a novel. I do agree that Tolstoy is wordy and repetitive (although I do have to wonder if any of it was lost in translation) but if he had intended to write W&P as a novel, it would have been tighter and several thousand words shorter.

 

[HordHolm]

In defense of War and Peace - and I'm not saying that it's a good novel - it was originally never written as a novel. It was a serial in a magazine. That's why it's so bloody long and each chapter is so drawn out. It was purposely written as a soap opera to make money. Common folk couldn't often afford books but they could buy magazines more cheaply and so often authors who needed money would write serial installments as they went (much like many writers on lit with their indulgent unending series) to make the rent by contracting to periodicals. That's why the plot meanders and stagnates so bloody much. The series was popular so he kept adding to it and a decade later, a publisher bound them all up and printed them as a novel. I do agree that Tolstoy is wordy and repetitive (although I do have to wonder if any of it was lost in translation) but if he had intended to write W&P as a novel, it would have been tighter and several thousand words shorter.

Yep, the same is largely true of Dickens (who I have a difficult relationship with, too). As I said, I don't really like the 19th Century authors at all (I'll give Dosteyevsky the benefit, and Dumas largely escapes my ire), but Tolstoy is on another level altogether. I suppose it doesn't help that he had his theory of history to propagate in W & P. But yes, the serialisation of works really didn't help, as you point out. At least by the end of the century magazines like the Strand were publishing shorter works which would complete in one issue, and we get Conan Doyle and Three Men in a Boat and stuff like that.

 

[Biker_Faerie]

Watership Down for me. Made to read it at school which is probably the reason.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

In defense of War and Peace - and I'm not saying that it's a good novel - it was originally never written as a novel. It was a serial in a magazine. That's why it's so bloody long and each chapter is so drawn out. It was purposely written as a soap opera to make money. Common folk couldn't often afford books but they could buy magazines more cheaply and so often authors who needed money would write serial installments as they went (much like many writers on lit with their indulgent unending series) to make the rent by contracting to periodicals. That's why the plot meanders and stagnates so bloody much. The series was popular so he kept adding to it and a decade later, a publisher bound them all up and printed them as a novel. I do agree that Tolstoy is wordy and repetitive (although I do have to wonder if any of it was lost in translation) but if he had intended to write W&P as a novel, it would have been tighter and several thousand words shorter.

I saw an amazing theatrical production of War and Peace once. It was three guys and a tricycle, outside on some grass, and lasted about 20 minutes. It was so good it's put me off ever trying the book.

Dickens is another one who was paid by the word and it shows. I finally got through David Copperfield when I could read it on my phone. The first 200 pages were quite good. The last 200 were blistering satire. Excellent. Sadly the 600 in the middle were wallowing sentimental dross, mostly with me praying his drippy wife would die of TB already.

I don't think it's that people can't cope with slow burn any more, but it needs to start with a hook and be labelled 'slow burn' or 'atmospheric'. See Neal Stephenson (though with Anathem he forgot to put the plot in), loads of SF&F writers.

A 12yo boy of my acquaintance got 1/3 through LoTR, decided he wanted to read Tolkien in chronological order, so went to the Silmarrillion and read an increasingly-battered paperback over the next year before returning to Farmer Giles of Ham and the Hobbit and then LotR. Personally the Hobbit was OK but LotR was tedious even though I love linguistics. Too much trotting from A to B to C by boring characters.

 

[HordHolm]

I saw an amazing theatrical production of War and Peace once. It was three guys and a tricycle, outside on some grass, and lasted about 20 minutes. It was so good it's put me off ever trying the book.

Dickens is another one who was paid by the word and it shows. I finally got through David Copperfield when I could read it on my phone. The first 200 pages were quite good. The last 200 were blistering satire. Excellent. Sadly the 600 in the middle were wallowing sentimental dross, mostly with me praying his drippy wife would die of TB already.

I don't think it's that people can't cope with slow burn any more, but it needs to start with a hook and be labelled 'slow burn' or 'atmospheric'. See Neal Stephenson (though with Anathem he forgot to put the plot in), loads of SF&F writers.

A 12yo boy of my acquaintance got 1/3 through LoTR, decided he wanted to read Tolkien in chronological order, so went to the Silmarrillion and read an increasingly-battered paperback over the next year before returning to Farmer Giles of Ham and the Hobbit and then LotR. Personally the Hobbit was OK but LotR was tedious even though I love linguistics. Too much trotting from A to B to C by boring characters.

Ah yes, Tolkien. I have to be very careful about giving my opinion of ol' JRR IRL. One friend of mine, who studied Anglo-Saxon at Uni, looked at me with offended shock when I mentioned that I find the characters in Lord of the Rings to be disappointingly one-dimensional. He then proceeded to tell me that Tolkien was writing a homage to the great early English, British and Irish folk stories and epics (which I knew very well, already), and that it was great literature - and he implied that I was too dumb to understand if I didn't like it. No mate, I understood it very well. I just didn't like it. Honestly, Sauron and Ming the Merciless are pretty much on the same level - bad for the sake of it - and nobody tells me that Flash Gordon is high culture for the twentieth century.

I think the other thing with Tolkien which really doesn't help is all the fanboy stuff, people nerding out to the nth degree on every tiny detail. Of course, that's hardly Tolkien's fault... And I do like a lot of his shorter stuff. I think with Lord of the Rings, however, that you need to be young to read it, before life experience means you demand nuance from characters.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is an interesting thread. You may get a better feel for people's tastes by knowing what they dislike than by knowing what they like.

A common thread in some posts that I agree with is . . . novels that go on too long. I enjoy Stephen King, but about half the books he wrote are way too long, like The Stand, It, and especially Under The Dome and 11/22/63. Tolstoy could excise most of the stuff about historical theory from War and Peace and it wouldn't miss much. I'm on page 640 of Stephenson's Anathem right now, just wanting something to happen. Only 160 pages to go. It could easily be half that length and lose little of value.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Going to deviate a little and mention a comic book story line.

Spiderman: One More Day story line.

I remember reading it in my comic shop, got to the end, ripped the comic in half, tossed it in the trash in front of several customers and told them if they wanted one, grab it now because I was going-and did, toss the rest of the copies in the trash and not reorder that issue. I never read another Spiderman comic after that, and I'd been reading that title since the late seventies.

My reaction was a bit extreme, but even now, that ending is infamous for pissing people off.

You managed to tickle my curiosity so I found the said comic series online and read it. Yeah, the ending was badly done. They should have shown hope at least, and then end it.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I also never quite got Murakami or... Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky was love at first glance for me. What is it about his writing that you dislike? I'm curious.

 

[SimonDoom]

Dostoevsky was love at first glance for me. What is it about his writing that you dislike? I'm curious.

Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov are two of my favorites, but it's been 30 years or more since I read them. More recently, I read The Idiot and didn't like it as much. It felt like Dostoevsky on crack to me-- everybody constantly overreacting to everything. An excess of feeling.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm on page 640 of Stephenson's Anathem right now, just wanting something to happen. Only 160 pages to go. It could easily be half that length and lose little of value.

I enjoyed Anathem, because the world-building is fabulous, but I did spend over half of it wondering when the plot was going to start. Once I realised there wasn't really one, I relaxed to enjoy the ride. Like the Lazy River in a water park, you don't complain about a lack of thrills.

Most authors couldn't and shouldn't try that (glares at Pratchett/Baxter's Long Earth), and I'd recommend Stephenson not do it again.

I've liked Stephen King's short stories, but didn't particularly enjoy the long blockbuster ones.

Was there a rule that books could only be sold in 1980s airports if they were at least a certain number of pages? It sure felt like it.

I think the only book I've actually chucked across the room was a Danielle Steele. I read half a dozen of them ages 14, having run out of Virginia Andrews and Sidney Sheldon and Arthur Haley. I got to a chapter of such bland fatuousness that today I'd assume AI had written it. Ended up reading the classics for contrast, over the next couple years. Some I rather enjoyed, others I enjoyed only for now being someone who had read them.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Dostoevsky was love at first glance for me. What is it about his writing that you dislike? I'm curious.

At risk of being burned at the stake here... I read crime and punishment Brothers karamazov and notes from the underground and found them all to be excruciatingly boring. I'm not exactly sure why, but his prose had a knack for making me not want to give a shit. Don't hurt me!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov are two of my favorites, but it's been 30 years or more since I read them. More recently, I read The Idiot and didn't like it as much. It felt like Dostoevsky on crack to me-- everybody constantly overreacting to everything. An excess of feeling.

That's typical for his writing that characters are very passionate, with life or death convictions. It's been 25 years or so since I read most of his work and I wonder if I read it now if I would find it just as good. The amazing philosophy and psychology that can be found in his work should be just as good at least.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Tolstoy could excise most of the stuff about historical theory from War and Peace and it wouldn't miss much.

Those were the best bits!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

At risk of being burned at the stake here... I read crime and punishment Brothers karamazov and notes from the underground and found them all to be excruciatingly boring. I'm not exactly sure why, but his prose had a knack for making me not want to give a shit. Don't hurt me!

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I can see why those two novels would be boring. Actually, most of his work starts slowly and has a generally slow pace. If you ever get around to reading him again, I recommend Crime and Punishment. It has the most interesting plot by far - it starts with a murder and is filled with dark psychology and philosophical musings and even the ending is sort of a happy one, which is rare for his work.

 

[JGittes]

I don't understand the dislike for The Great Gatsby early in the thread. I didn't fully appreciate it until my third read-through when I was nearly 50. I'm an American expat living in England with a German wife, and the last line:

'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'

Fully describes American, British, and German current politics and culture and was written nearly a century ago. It applies to personal psychological understanding as well.

Regarding books of which I didn't understand the love, anything by Sally Rooney. She burst on the literary scene a few years ago, and I thought I'd widen my horizons by reading 'Normal People' and 'Conversations with Friends.' I was so confused by Conversations with Friends that I tried to re-read the first 30 pages three times before realizing the problem. She doesn't use quotation marks around dialogue. I re-read the beginning a fourth time but found it not worth the effort. It is well written but interesting only if one is in one's 20s and going through those experiences for the first time.

Except for rousing adventure tales like The Count of Monte Cristo, the foreign classics mentioned here require so much understanding of the time's history and sociology that it isn't fair to judge them by contemporary standards. I generally don't read them because I don't want to invest the time to understand them completely. But I re-read the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Time Machine when I read commentary that the latter is essentially a sequel to the former, and I'll be damned if that's not the worst interpretation of those two novel's relationship.